Theology, Philosophy, and Science for the New Millennium
Questions
What is reality?
What is God?
What is mind?
What is truth?
What is matter?
What is space?
What is time?
These are concepts with which we are all familiar, but we often find it
difficult to create a coherent and comprehensive big picture with these
elements.
As my conversations with others around the world and as my studies into
the history of mankind's knowledge show, the big picture is attainable
and has enlightened millions from nearly every walk of life.
In fact, the big picture I'm referring to rests at the core of Judaism,
Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Monism, realism, idealism,
existentialism, naturalism, humanism, and atheism.
It might be startling to think that monotheism and atheism are the same
idea, but after several years of unorthodox study, I believe the
differences in all these worldviews are more trivial than the
similarities of the basic messages they deliver.
The purpose of this essay is not to promote a new idea, but to promote
the common and unifying ideas of our ancestors that are virtually
non-existent in the modern Western societies of man.
For example, when talking to someone today about all these things:
reality, truth, God, mind, matter, space, and time, there is an urge to
define them in terms of yet another idea: The Universe.
Now, some people would say that the picture is already wrong: God has a
separate part of the Universe, or, perhaps, God created the Universe
and exists outside it. And of course, some would say God? What God?
At this juncture the Universe is not a very useful concept. It offers
no clarity to our worldview, only further complication. So an attempt
to answer these questions from another direction is needed.
One warning should be given now: while I suggest that these questions
can be given satisfactory answers, they cannot be answered
consecutively with complete and correct answers. Instead they can be
answered gradually from crude to clear, through an exploratory
discussion, making a few wrong turns, and eventually revealing a
comprehensive answer for all the questions at once.
Reality and God
Reality is real. It exists.
It is a world of things, such as people like you and I. That means
reality is a world of matter. And since things need a place, space and
time are also of reality.
Reality is colorful. It is noisy. There is love here, and also hate.
Soft things, hard things, solid things, and less solid things.
It seems like a simple enough description of reality, but plenty of
argumentative types will tell you it is a terrible description.
Sounds and colors, as well as the hardness of a rock, these people will
argue, are not real. They are illusions of the mind.
The true reality, they will tell us, has no colors, or sounds, or
sensations: our mind fools us into thinking these things are real.
The idea that reality is the world directly in front of you, existing
and acting exactly as it appears to, is often called metaphysical
idealism.
The critics of this idea invoke the concepts of the "true reality" and
"illusions of the mind" in order to present their worldview.
However, ask those critics what truth and mind are, and precisely how
they exist in reality, and it would be difficult to find a widespread
and coherent notion among them.
Of course, not having perfect answers for "truth" and "mind" does not
mean that they are wrong to criticize idealism: just that their
criticism looks simpler and more impressive on the surface than it
actually is.
That said, there is a good case for another reality. A reality that
stands independently of human creations, such color or sound, or pain
or pleasure.
One of the earliest descriptions of this other reality came over 700
years before Christ, from the Jewish prophet Isaiah:
For
my thoughts are not your thoughts,
my ways not your ways - it is Yahweh
who speaks.
Yes, the heavens are as high above
the earth
as my ways are above your ways,
my thoughts are above your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8, 9
As Karen Armstrong sums up this passage in her book, The History of
God: "The reality of God lay beyond the reach of words and
concepts."
(p. 62)
God? A reality? A reality different than our reality?
Today not very many people think "ultimate Reality" when they hear the
word "God". But for many thousands of years, that has been exactly what
God symbolized. Again from The History of God:
"Monotheists have called this transcendence 'God', but they have hedged
this around with important provisos. Jews, for example, are forbidden
to pronounce the sacred Name of God, and Muslims must not attempt to
depict the divine in visual imagery. The discipline is a reminder that
the reality we call 'God' exceeds all human expression." (p. xxi)
Over 500 years before Christ, a man who would eventually become "The
Enlightened One", or the Buddha, began to talk of nirvana. Nirvana is
just another name for the ultimate Reality. So is The Tao or The Way,
or to the Hindus, Brahman.
The 17th Century Enlightenment philosopher Baruch de Spinoza spoke of
the ultimate Reality as "God or Nature". To him the ultimate Substance
could rightfully be called "God" or "Nature." As long as the idea was
the same, it made no significant difference. He was known as the
greatest Jew and the greatest Atheist at the same time.
The ideal difference between the visible, knowable human reality and
the ineffable reality of God is, as has been previously claimed, that
God is not attainable, even in description, through words and concepts.
But "words and concepts" is rather vague. What is meant by that?
It might be surprising to hear the Buddha, or a Jewish prophet claim
that "existing" and "being" are mere human concepts! But that was their
message. Since nirvana was so far beyond such ideas, even the concept
of existence could not be given, or denied to nirvana. In other words,
it would be equally improper to say that God exists, as it would be to
say that God doesn't exist.
Because God is apart from our reality of matter, space, and time, no
material, spatial, or temporal link can be made between the two
realities.
Are they linked at all? If so, how?
Mind and Truth
A 3rd century writer named Plotinus tried to demonstrate a kind of link
by depicting God as a point. The point was meant to be the center of a
circle that contains all other possible circles that could exist with
that same center.
He drew circles around the point, as if they were ripples from God, and
the first two circles he considered divine. They were the mind and the
soul.
He used the mind as the closest concept to God, and the mind's
derivation, the soul, wrapped up man's physical and spiritual existence.
The soul may be an outdated concept, but the mind and its basic role
between God and reality is still useful. It can be explained
rationally, exposing it as a wonderfully logical machine, rather than a
magical one.
However, as simple and elegant as the explanation is, much more ground
needs to be covered before it can be offered.
So what is truth?
One way to answer that is by asking about what we apply truth to,
namely: knowledge.
What is knowledge?
Knowledge is the collection of truths of humans. In some cases, it may
be more appropriate to say that knowledge is "discovered" and in some
cases, more appropriate to say that it has been "invented", but no
matter of how it enters our thoughts, it becomes knowledge because it
is accepted as true by some human being.
This has very important consequences for both knowledge and truth.
For one, the notion that "facts are facts, independent of the hopes and
dreams of humans" cannot be accurate.
Secondly, following from the first consequence, knowledge and truth are
not set in stone. Things that are known to be true one day can be found
to be false the next.
This frightens people. The idea that truth, something we often create a
lofty ideal for, is frail and subject to change is often rejected
outright, purely due to the discomfort it causes. How can truth change?
The scientific method. Or more accurately, it changes due to critical
rationalism.
Critical rationalism is the philosophy that depicts knowledge as an
evolving set of theories, assumptions, beliefs, and ideas that we never
prove. Instead, we accept them without proof, tentatively, because they
solve certain problems for us. Through experimentation and critical
examination we can find problems in our theories and beliefs, and
through a fearless use of our imagination, we can solve those problems
by fixing the broken idea, or abandoning it altogether and replacing it
with something new.
But the new knowledge is never offered as an absolute solution. It is
never claimed to be proven true. It is simply regarded as yet to be
found false. Thus, the new knowledge is examined and revised exactly as
the older knowledge it replaced was.
Are there any truths that don't change?
It is tempting to conceive of two notions of truth: truth relative to
man, imperfect and uncertain; and absolute truth.
However, as even the ancients knew, "absolute truth" was not for our
minds. There is no process used to discover absolute truth or to test
that you have discovered absolute truth.
And while we could ascribe an absolute mind to God, and while we could
claim that absolute truth resides there, there wouldn't be much use to
doing so. As Spinoza writes:
[…] substance thinking and
substance extended are one and the same substance [God or Nature], comprehended now through one attribute, now through the
other. So, also, a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one
and the same thing. This truth seems to have been dimly recognized by
those Jews who maintained that God, God’s intellect, and the things
understood by God are identical.
The Ethics
from The Note to Proposition 2.7
So truth, as it will forever be known to us, is devised in our very
minds.
That means the truth is going to be different according to different
people.
This makes the relationship between reality and truth very difficult to
illustrate in our picture.
The solution is to realize that just as truth is devised by each man
individually (though this does not rule out the wise idea of an
individual being mindful of the thoughts of others in that process), so
is the very reality of each man produced individually in his mind.
The reality of man is his conscious experience. It is not defined
entirely by the senses of observation, and it is not defined entirely
by the knowledge a man possesses. Instead, reality, the human conscious
experience, is a wildly complex nest of concepts and ideas and words,
which includes both observations and knowledge.
So far, the point has been quietly made that matter, space, and time
are mere human concepts, just like "exists", "true", and "real".
These are all rather difficult propositions to come to terms with, but
the notion that the physical dimensions of reality are man-made seems
to be an even greater source of confusion (or hostility) in the various
worldviews I find abundant in modern society.
Also, claiming that the mind resides in absolute reality, even though
it seems to be man's mind, is not a very clear notion. It at once
conjures the thought of many paradoxes.
Space, Time, and Matter
Look at the image above, with three minds contained in absolute nature,
each producing their own separate relative nature. One might ask, since
matter, space, and time belong to relative nature, what are the minds
made of, and how can they exist in absolute nature without time and
space to separate them?
If these issues are to be discussed clearly, the theological notion of
God as a pure and partless transcendent reality incapable of
description will have to be left behind. In a way, saying that God
contains entities called minds has already jumpstarted that process.
To further it along, we will hypothesize about how God may work, and I
will begin by quoting Sir Isaac Newton from his masterpiece on natural
philosophy and science:
1. Absolute, true,
and mathematical time, of itself and from
its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything
external, and by another name is called "duration";
relative, apparent, and common time is some sensible and external
(whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means
of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time, such as
an hour, a day, a month, a year.
2. Absolute space, in
its own nature, without relation to
anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative
space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute
spaces, which our senses determine by its position to bodies and
which is commonly taken for immovable space; such is the
dimension of a subterraneous, an aerial, or celestial space,
determined by its position in respect of the earth. Absolute and
relative space are the same in figure and magnitude, but they do
not remain always numerically the same. For if the earth, for
instance, moves, a space of our air, which relatively and in
respect of the earth remains always the same, will at one time be
one part of the absolute space into which the air passes; at
another time it will be another part of the same, and so,
absolutely understood, it will be continually changed.
Scholium to the definitions in Philosophiae
Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Newton wrote about the multiple natures of space and time, one nature
being absolute and the other relative.
It is widely held that Einstein, in establishing his physical theories,
completely disregarded the absolute natures of space and time, but that
is not true, by Heisenberg's account.
"But you don't
seriously believe," Einstein
protested, "that none but
observable magnitudes must go into a physical theory?"
"Isn't that precisely
what you have done with relativity?" I asked in
some surprise. "After all, you did stress the fact that it is
impermissible to speak of absolute time, simply because absolute time
cannot be observed; that only clock readings, be it in the moving
reference system or the system at rest, are relevant to the
determination of time."
"Possibly
I did use this kind of reasoning," Einstein admitted, "but
it is nonsense all the same. Perhaps
I could put it more
diplomatically by saying that it may
be heuristically useful to keep
in mind what one has actually
observed. But on principle, it is quite
wrong to try founding a theory on
observable magnitudes alone. In
reality, the very opposite happens.
It is the theory which decides
what we can observe."
Physics and Beyond -
Encounters and Conversations, by Werner Heisenberg
Clearly, while the terms and concepts of his theories dealt exclusively
with the relative space and time, deep within the thought process of
his mind was the presence of absolute space and time.
It therefore isn't surprising to learn that an important influence on
Einstein's theology, philosophy, and science was Spinoza.
The notion of space and time having both absolute and relative
incarnations is not the most widely known idea around, but it is also
not very difficult to find in the writings of physics and philosophy.
But there is more to this idea, and it is much rarer to come in contact
with. And, unfortunately, the vast majority of those who do come into
contact with it will admit that they haven't had the slightest bit of
luck deciphering it.
I'm talking specifically about the Monadology of Leibniz.
Leibniz split the world into two different spheres: the phenomenal
world of our space, time, matter, and events; and the metaphysical
world of the monads.
A monad is an absolute form of matter. It isn't an atom; it isn't the
matter we come into contact with in our reality. The monad is a form of
matter that holds all that ever was and ever will be, and while we are
not direct observers of this hidden deterministic world, the monads
"unfold" and partially reveal themselves to us.
It is hard to believe that, Leibniz had basically proposed by the 18th
century a worldview that leant itself exceptionally well to the set of
phenomena discovered early in the 20th century called quantum
mechanics, and that even in the 21st century the quest for
understanding quantum mechanics continues, yet Leibniz's ideas are only
investigated by radical fringe scientists.
But this seems to be the case.
No longer do we have a simple picture of reality of matter, space, and
time. The picture has absolute reality of absolute matter, absolute
space, and absolute time, and also multiple relative realities of
relative matter, relative space, and relative time.
In this picture mind is absent and the lines between the realities have
been lost.
It is time to recover them, not with philosophical dialog, but a
scientific approach to understanding what has been said so far.
The Big Picture
The first step is to depict absolute nature using mathematics, which
will be done using a computer language called Visual FoxPro. Any
computer language could be used, but Visual FoxPro is a language that
is easily read and understood by non-computer programmers, unlike Java
or C++.
This is a very crude demonstration meant to show how we could possibly
approach modeling one of the most basic phenomena observed: the
electromagnetic interaction.
* This is a proto-type program for absolute nature
* Set the initial conditions by creating an array
* to hold all the things in absolute nature
* In this case there will be 20 absolute objects
public absoluteObjects[20]
* Fill the array with 8 absolute Electrons
* And distribute them in a 2x2x2 grid
* The numeric parameters for the electron class
* represent its location and movement in 3D
* The parameters are kind, X, Y, Z, dX, dY, dZ
absoluteObjects[1] = create("absoluteMatter", "Electron", 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[2] = create("absoluteMatter", "Electron", 10, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[3] = create("absoluteMatter", "Electron", 0, 10, 0, 0, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[4] = create("absoluteMatter", "Electron", 10, 10, 0, 0, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[5] = create("absoluteMatter", "Electron", 0, 0, 10, 0, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[6] = create("absoluteMatter", "Electron", 10, 0, 10, 0, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[7] = create("absoluteMatter", "Electron", 0, 10, 10, 0, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[8] = create("absoluteMatter", "Electron", 10, 0, 10, 0, 0, 0)
* Now add 12 absolute Photons, travelling in a 1x3x4 grid
* which are travelling toward the absolute Electrons
absoluteObjects[9] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 0, 0, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[10] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 5, 0, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[11] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 10, 0, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[12] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 0, 5, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[13] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 5, 5, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[14] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 10, 5, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[15] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 0, 10, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[16] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 5, 10, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[17] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 10, 10, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[18] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 0, 15, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[19] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 5, 15, -10, 0, 0)
absoluteObjects[20] = create("absoluteMatter", "Photon", 100, 10, 15, -10, 0, 0)
* Once the initial state is defined
* The program can compute the next states
do while .T.
* First, look at every electron and see
* if there is a photon at the same place
for each absoluteObject in absoluteObjects
if absoluteObject.kind = "Electron"
for each absoluteObject2 in absoluteObjects
if absoluteObject2.kind = "Photon" and not absoluteObject2.ignore
if absoluteObject.X = absoluteObject2.X and ;
absoluteObject.Y = absoluteObject2.Y and ;
absoluteObject.Z = absoluteObject2.Z
* If they are in the same place
* The electron should absorb the photon
* and alter its momentum
absoluteObject.dX = absoluteObject2.dX / 10
absoluteObject.dY = absoluteObject2.dX / 10
absoluteObject.dZ = absoluteObject2.dX / 10
absoluteObject2.dX = absoluteObject.dX
absoluteObject2.dY = absoluteObject.dX
absoluteObject2.dZ = absoluteObject.dX
absoluteObject2.ignore = .T.
* Store the photon on the electron
* So it can be re-emitted
absoluteObject.absorbed = absoluteObject2
exit
endif
endif
endfor
endif
endfor
* Objects in motion stay in motion, objects at rest stay at rest
for each absoluteObject in absoluteObjects
if not absoluteObject.ignore
absoluteObject.X = absoluteObject.X + absoluteObject.dX
absoluteObject.Y = absoluteObject.Y + absoluteObject.dY
absoluteObject.Z = absoluteObject.Z + absoluteObject.dZ
endif
endfor
* Finally, if any electron has a photon to emit, do it now
for each absoluteObject in absoluteObjects
if absoluteObject.kind = "Electron" and vartype(absoluteObject.absorbed) = "O"
* restore the objects' pre-absorbtion movement
adx = absoluteObject.absorbed.dX
ady = absoluteObject.absorbed.dY
adz = absoluteObject.absorbed.dZ
absoluteObject.absorbed.dX = sign(absoluteObject.dX) * 10
absoluteObject.absorbed.dY = sign(absoluteObject.dY) * 10
absoluteObject.absorbed.dZ = sign(absoluteObject.dZ) * 10
* Don't restore the electrons exact movement
* change the x, y, and z around for a little spice
absoluteObject.dX = ady
absoluteObject.dY = adx
absoluteObject.dZ = adz
* Place the emitted photon where it should be
absoluteObject.absorbed.X = absoluteObject.X + absoluteObject.absorbed.dX
absoluteObject.absorbed.Y = absoluteObject.Y + absoluteObject.absorbed.dY
absoluteObject.absorbed.Z = absoluteObject.Z + absoluteObject.absorbed.dZ
absoluteObject.absorbed.ignore = .F.
absoluteObject.absorbed = .null.
endif
endfor
enddo
* Object Structures for Matter ======================================
define class AbsoluteMatter as Custom
kind = ""
X = 0
Y = 0
Z = 0
dX = 0
dY = 0
dZ = 0
absorbed = .null.
ignore = .F.
function init
lparameters kind, x, y, z, dx, dy, dz
this.kind = kind
this.X = x
this.Y = y
this.Z = z
this.dX = dx
this.dY = dy
this.dZ = dz
return
enddefine
* End of File ======================================================
This is a very simplistic and crude (meaning inaccurate) proto-type of
how the electromagnetic force can be modeled in absolute nature. It
lacks basic concepts such as mass and charge.
But the idea here is to imagine absolute nature as an algorithm of
these interactions.
If we run the program and visualize the data in it at different states,
we see that the absolute electrons are motionless until the wave of
absolute photons disturbs them. Then they scatter the light around, and
continue to interact for a few iterations of the program.
In addition to this being a very inaccurate representation of the
electromagnetic force, those familiar with the principles of physics
will also point out that the electrons and photons in absolute nature
have been defined as having precise positions and motion, which
violates the infamous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
But the positions and motion of the absolute matter are in absolute
space and absolute time, not the relative matter in relative space and
relative time of our human observations and measurements.
Being that the positions and motion in the program are of the
un-measurable absolute nature, there is the handy consequence of the
data in the program being excused from the Uncertainty Principle.
In fact, it is excused from all principles in physics because it is not
science. A model that does not predict a measurement is not science.
This is even further exemplified by the fact that none of the data in
the program have any particular units. X, Y, and Z are literally units
of absolute space, and dX, dY, and dZ are the units of absolute space
an absolute object travels in one iteration of the program, which can
be seen as a single unit of absolute time.
So is there a way to make the model of absolute nature scientific?
As long as there is a way to produce a measurement from absolute nature
it can be done, and since the mind resides in absolute reality, and
since the mind is claimed to produce relative reality including
observations and measurements, it should be as simple as creating a
human mind in the positions and motion of absolute matter.
Grasping how the mind "produces" a reality of measurements isn't simple
for everyone.
Consider again the visualization of the data of absolute reality. The
motion of the absolute electrons and absolute photons isn't very
interesting.
But if the model of absolute reality incorporates more physical
concepts and forces, ideally structures such as atoms and molecules can
be simulated.
If those can be simulated, then more complex structures, such as
bacteria, plants, and animals should follow. So should a human brain.
The human brain is like a computer made of a great complex web of
patterns of neuronal wiring.
When stimuli reach the brain, it isn't deciphered into an observation.
Instead, it is used to create a new theory about the world, literally,
a new little pattern of neuronal wiring.
When we see the clouds in the sky, new groups of brain wiring are being
formed. But we don't necessarily re-create the entire observation from
scratch, translating bits of stimuli into bits of pixels, like a
computer monitor receiving signals from the computer. This new pattern
of wiring is conjured up by connecting it to plenty of old patterns
already in the mind, such as the patterns of wiring we have for "blue"
and "white" and "sky" and "cloud".
But if we look at the data in absolute nature, and even if we peer at a
group of absolute objects interacting in such a complex way as the
human brain, we won't see the words or concepts "blue" or "white" or
"sky" or "cloud" in the data.
That's obvious because the data is mostly numeric.
But the same is true for the measurements in the brain, which
themselves are a theory about the world.
If a scientist holds an apple to a ruler, the stimuli his brain
receives creates the pattern of wiring that results in the conclusions
that the apple hides 5 of the lines on the ruler. That new theory,
along with a bit of old theory, such as "the lines on the ruler are an
inch apart", leaves him with the final theory that the apple is 5
inches wide.
For this reason, all the brain's observations, knowledge, and
measurements are like theories, little patterns of neuronal wiring that
can be seen as words or sentences or paragraphs in a very large story
that is our conscious experience.
That story is the relative reality.
Let's say the scientist and apple are not of our reality, but they are
actually in a simulation of absolute reality running on a computer.
Even though the simulated scientist knows that the apple is 5 inches
wide, if we look at the raw data of the absolute objects in the
scientist’s brain, we won't find the measurement of "5 inches" to be
bits of data in the computer's memory.
The simulated measurement only exists in the computer in the sense that
it is a sentence from a story expressed in the abstract patterns of the
concrete data.
The idea of all of this, to restate in the clearest terms: is to
simulate the act of measurement.
That has never been attempted in science before. Every scientific model
of phenomena has been a simulation of reality and its measurements:
never before has science simulated the act of measurement itself.
In fact, with the exception of Leibniz and a few radical fringe
research groups, never before has this idea even been discussed.
And for a good reason. While it is a simple idea, and while it seems to
be hypothetically possible, due to a lack of the sheer computing power
required, and a lack of the appropriate knowledge about the human
brain, it may be at least a decade still before such a simulation is
achieved.
Predictions
But what tests can we perform with such a simulation?
If we can create a simulation of absolute nature that contains an
internal observer, then the first test we may perform is to see if the
data in the simulation matches the measurements we can decipher from
the mind of the simulated observer.
If the standard model of physics as it exists today (a combination of
the Copenhagen Interpretation and general relativity) is ever developed
to where it is capable of simulating a human brain, we should expect
that the data from the simulation and the measurements of the simulated
observer match exactly.
If they do not match, the standard model would actually be falsified:
despite the data of the simulation being in agreement with our
measurements of our reality, the simulated measurements of an internal
observer would not be in agreement would our real measurements, which
is a failure.
On the other hand, if the mind actually does create relative matter,
relative space, and relative time using stimuli, rather than simply
"reading" the stimuli exactly, then simulations of the act of
measurement where the data of the simulation does not agree with our
measurements of reality (such as length contraction or time dilation,
or the "wave-particle duality") leave open the possibility that the
simulated measurements written in the neuronal wiring of the simulated
observer will in fact agree with our real measurements.
My basic point is that when science is able to model the act of
measurement, the concrete data of the model will not be capable of
falsifying the model: the abstract measurements made from within will.
This would be an entirely new approach to modeling phenomena and
falsifying physical theories.
And it would be a clever new approach to a fully unified theory of
physics.
Answers
What is reality?
The conscious experience, a memeplex that
encompasses all the observations and knowledge of an individual.
Reality is relative, uncertain, and imperfect.
What is God?
The name of the transcendent absolute reality, which
is perfect and deterministic.
What is mind?
Mind is a collection of absolute matter in absolute
reality, acting as a computer using stimuli to define its own reality.
What is truth?
That which is consistent with relative reality.
What is matter?
The theory of the mind that there is something.
What is space?
The theory of the mind that separates matter into
different locations.
What is time?
The theory of the mind that something has changed,
for example, the hands on a clock, or the position of the sun in the
sky.
Coincidentally, this suggestion for a new type of unified physics
switches the conventional roles of time and events in reality.
Our basic conception often leads us to believe that things happened in
time and space, as if space and time are a medium for events.
But in reality, time and space are sophisticated conclusions the result
from the analysis change and events.
In this conception of space and time, the infamous motion paradoxes of
Zeno never arise.
Final Thoughts
The worldview I've presented here began with a basic notion of
theology, ventured into the philosophical, and wound up developing a
potential experiment that may in my lifetime make this worldview a
revolutionary scientific advancement.
You may be wondering, in light of all this, which of the worldviews I
consider my own.
As similar as they all are, there are differences and their core ideas
have undoubtedly changed over the centuries.
I consider my worldview closest to that of the existentialist.
I believe that all of existence, all reality, all truth, and in fact,
all good and evil and right and wrong, to be concepts in my mind
(another name for them would be "memes") that are mine to manipulate.
That power demands the responsibility of thinking critically and
rationally about what is really good and what is really evil, and to
improve on these concepts as I grow and learn as a human being.
The only exception that I don't have the power to manipulate is "God",
the absolute reality.
I understand that any talk of God in the sense that I have actual
knowledge of God is absurd: such talk only leads to contradiction and
paradox.
I understand that speaking of God in my regular daily life has little
or no practical value.
If I am to lead the good life, a happy life, and a compassionate life,
my focus must rest solely on reality and the real and immediate human
joy and suffering it contains.
Only by focusing on reality will I be able to see the actual problems
of reality, and only by thinking critically about reality will I be
able to solve those problems.
Actions to create harmony in reality, be it harmony in my physical and
mental and emotional health, or harmony in my relationships with others
and with society, are how I attempt to lead the good life.
I believe, as long as my thoughts and words are focused on my relative
reality rather than on the absolute reality the deep and irresolvable
paradoxes of theology, philosophy, and science never surface.
For its consistency, and for its comprehensiveness, I believe that this
is the best worldview yet conceived. And I must re-emphasize that it is
not a new worldview: it was initially conceived by the first
monotheists of the Middle East and nontheists of the Far East thousands
of years ago, and ever since has been continually revised by humanity's
greatest thinkers to reflect new knowledge.